~ Adventures of a 20-year bonsai beginner

Tag Archives: styling

Ficus Benjamina. Not always considered outstanding material for bonsai, but it is readily available and will survive indoors, so I suspect it is used as bonsai more than many species — even if by the inexperienced and curious.

Mine is not dissimilar as this is a tree I have had since my early years in the art. By my records, I’ve had this plant for a solid 20 years.

I’m going to skip any root pruning this year and see if I can get a fairly refined canopy before it has to go back inside for the cold months. So first, today, is defoliating.

I’ve been warned that F. Benjamina can die back if you don’t leave a leaf at each growing tip, but that creates an odd challenge. You see, I like to see the tree structure when I prune, and I don’t know which leaf will be at the tip until all of the decisions are made. So, here’s hoping for a strong growth response.

After removing the leaves I do some initial pruning.

And then wire to get the branches back into position.

I will have to watch the wire carefully. If I get the strong growth response I want, it will bite in quickly.

This Vicary Privet is happy and healthy, and while you may not be able to tell just how many, it has way too many trunks.

Not sure about the front yet, so here’s another angle.

It’s time to make some decisions, but HOW?! I took a good long look and tried not to move too fast — a common mistake for me. There were a couple that I knew I wanted to keep, and a couple that really obviously needed to come out because they didn’t have much growth or were interfering with the keepers.

This got things moving in the right direction, and after removing a couple I could get a better look. Now I could see that one was far too straight. Another was angled counter to the flow that was beginning to develop, and eventually it was clear that I needed to take it down to three.

I am no pro at carving, but I decided to get a start on shaping all of these large cuts.

In addition to hand tools, I put this Nibbler bit to work.

I wired just a couple of branches to get them angled in the right general direction, but I refrained from pruning anything more than the trunks that were removed.

Here’s how it looks now.

And to give you an idea of my vision for the future, I will leave you with a sketch.

I’ve had this San Jose Juniper for nearly a year now. I acquired it as bonsai material (as opposed to home and garden nursery stock) and did some initial branch positioning late last summer. It’s strong and healthy, and in need of a better soil mix so I will get it out of this nursery pot and into something more fitting.

There were a couple of design adjustments I decided to make now as well. It didn’t take long after that first wiring for the wire to start biting in, so it was removed in the fall and some of the branches have crept upwards since then. Most adjustments can wait, but I did decide to go ahead and re-wire the apex and upper left branch to get them back down where they belong.

I also removed the lowest branch on the left, as I have been planning to do, and used guy wires to pull two back branches into that space. This may seem like a lot of moving at the same time as a repot, but at only 13 or 14 inches tall, this tree’s branches are quite flexible and shiuld be able to recover well.